Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Layout-Composition 16 , the Big Picture Designed Owen Fitzgerald

Owen Fitzgerald's layout and composition sense is great for study. Why?Because he doesn't use a lot of detail in his scenes. It's all about the overall statement and clarity.

He uses plenty of empty space in between more filled areas.

He doesn't compose anything directly in the middle.Nothing is evenly spaced.He uses a combination of controlled framing devices and intersection. Nothing is placed in the scenes by accident.

He uses lots of contrasts, tall and thin, short and wide, characters posed on angles to contrast against perpendicular furniture and buildings. Organic VS geometric shapes.His scenes have an overall clear statement. The whole frame reads as a design.

You know how you can tell if you have a good composition? An overall pleasing design statement and a clear image? Not just a bunch of clutter?Look at the image small. If you can still easily read what is happening and the overall shapes add up to a clear design, then you are probably there.Frank Frazetta has beautiful intricate details in his work, but his images also are stunning simple compositions. The whole image is a design.

Tricky angles

Owen can draw scenes from any angle, and he is still careful to organize the elements in the frame so that everything reads clearly and is a handsome design.

In my opinion, a good clean handsome layout beats a ton of evenly spaced cluttered detail any day. Especially in anmated cartoons where you keep cutting from scene to scene.

On the bit where you say Fitzgerald doesn't compose anything directly in the middle, the image on the right seems to have the woman's head smack bang in the middle, which threw me initially given what you wrote but there's a great natural line of focus in that image - the woman speaks first, leads us to the man, who then leads us up to the window. To me, the composition doesn't look that simple but he leads us through is so well. It's a great image.

But one thing with that one image is that I find it harder to read the text than look at the picture - my eyes are drawn constantly to that pattern of woman, man, window. Know what I mean?

I wonder how the lettering is worked out in these - does Fitzgerald outline where the text is supposed to go? Does he even have the full text worked out?

That tiny shot of Bob Hope standing and looking at the "fashion show today" window...I can't stop looking at it! It's such a nothing panel, but Owen pumps so much life and zest into it, I just want to frame it!

Wally Wood streamlined his work in the 60's: improved his foreshortening, reduced his economy of inking, reduced the general economy of his composition, and by all rights considered himself a better artist.

I'll take his cluttered, feverish, and overworked EC stuff over his later work. The later work hasn't an ounce of the investment, or the PATHOS of the stuff one considers full of formal flaws.